Dead Man Twice

by Christopher Bush

  The older woman nodded. “I hate the beastly things all over the place! Can’t keep ’em off the food, and every minute I think I’m going to get stung.”

  “What’s the best way of getting rid of the nests?” asked Potter.

  “I don’t know what they do. Young—the keeper here—he kills off all the nests. Mr. Kenneth spoke to him about ours. Some kind of poison, wasn’t it, Mabel?”

  “I don’t like poison,” said Potter with a shudder. “Always reminds me of weedkiller.” He explained the mystery. “You see, my wife might get tired of me one of these days!”

  She gave him a waggish look, then side-tracked to the latest arsenic cause célèbre. Five minutes of that and Potter rose to go.

  “I suppose Mr. Hayles wasn’t here last week-end?”

  “Oh, no! When was he down, Mabel? Week-end before last; that was it.”

  A final giving of instructions and he was off again. Not far down the road, he asked a passer-by where Young the keeper lived and found he was close by his cottage. Furthermore he was in—and alone.

  “I suppose you haven’t seen anything of Mr. Hayles?” began Potter.

  The other apparently misunderstood the question, but the answer was electrifying.

  “Oh, yes! He came round all right.” A pause while he examined the stranger. “Was it you he wanted it for sir?”

  “I expect so,” said Potter, sparring for time. “When did he come?”

  “It’d be about half after four.”

  Potter made a gesture of annoyance. “Then I just missed him!” He clicked his tongue and racked his brains for a further opening. “May I come in a second? Thank you… I’m a friend of his—as you probably gathered.… What did he tell you exactly?”

  “He just said he wanted a little more of the poison… for a friend to kill a dog with, so I give him enough for a dose.”

  “That’s right.… What did you give him? The cyanide?”

  “That other ain’t much good.… Only don’t you go saying anything, sir, or you’ll get me into trouble. I ain’t supposed to let any of that stuff out of my hands—or the rat poison neither—only I obliged Mr. Hayles once afore.”

  Potter nodded, then produced a shilling.

  “Which way did he go when he left you?”

  “Turnpike way, sir. You might of met him if you come that way.”

  “I came the other way,” explained Potter. “Oh! and by the way, Mr. Hayles was rather queer when I saw him this morning and the doctor said he wasn’t to go out—that’s why I came round myself.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand him coming out a night like this. Did he look ill when you saw him?”

  “Well, I can’t say I noticed anything, sir. He was in a rare hurry—and a bit fussy, but that’s his usual way, sir, as you know.”

  Another question or two and Potter was off again. Not far down the lane was the main road where Hayles might have caught a bus for Reading. In any case, Franklin’s instructions had been that if he weren’t at Ripley Norton, he was to push on to Marfleet Parva. But why Hayles had wanted that poison Potter didn’t know. All the orders he’d had were to find out if he’d had a chance to get any, and—something he’d been unable to do—to discover if a bottle were missing from his mother’s house. But Hayles had had poison from Young the previous week-end, on the plea of doing in a dangerous cat. Was the excuse genuine? The season for wasps was over and some sort of excuse had to be made, and as for the excuse given that day, it’d been that a friend wanted some to destroy a dog that was old and blind.

  The moon was now up, and with an eye for the speedometer and then another for direction posts, he drove steadily along the frosty road with the sky above a mass of stars. Young’s nine miles proved correct; more difficult was the finding of the private road to Marfleet Hall. As he drew in at the porticoed entrance he looked at the dashboard clock—7.15. If by a lucky chance Hayles had come there, he ought to be well on his heels.

  “Mrs. Claire in?” he asked the footman.

  “No, sir; she’s in town. We expect her back at any moment.”

  “Mr. Claire in?”

  “He’s in town, too, sir. We expect him to-morrow, sir.”

  “What about the butler? Could I see him for a moment?”

  “He’s at the town house, sir.”

  “Hm!” said Potter. “Perhaps you could help me. Has Mr. Kenneth Hayles been here this evening by any chance?”

  The footman’s face took on an expression which was either interest or relief. “He called this evening, sir. He hasn’t been gone very long.”

  Thereupon Potter introduced himself formally as the confidential emissary of Mrs. Hayles, and asked for details. They proved, as far as Potter was concerned, thrilling enough but utterly incomprehensible. Mr. Hayles had called at about 5.30, and on being admitted, seemed very odd and excited in his manner. He asked to see Mrs. Claire and on being told she might be late, said he’d wait in the drawing-room and there the footman brought him some tea. Some of this he drank but the cake was left untouched. He then rang and asked for a very small bottle with a cork in it, and this was brought from the kitchen. A minute or two later he rang again and said he wouldn’t wait after all—he’d leave a note for Mrs. Claire. He then shoo’d the footman out and rang again a few minutes later, in order apparently to hand over a note concerning which he gave the most careful instructions. It was to be handed to Mrs. Claire, when she was alone, and to nobody else; and it wasn’t to leave the footman’s hands before then.

  “He gave me half a crown, sir,” said the footman, “and then what do you think he did, sir? He shook hands with me! Gripped my hand, like that! And he didn’t say a word! I helped him on with his coat, just here where we’re standing, sir, and I’m blowed if he didn’t shake hands with me all over again! And he was crying—tears all running down his face!”

  “Good Lord! What for?”

  “Don’t ask me, sir—unless it was the thought of Mr. France’s funeral to-morrow.”

  Potter nodded knowingly. “Might be that. And you said he was odd in his manner. Just how?”

  “Well, sir, he kept muttering to himself and acting sort of queer, as if he was the worse for drink; only he wasn’t that, sir—or he didn’t smell like it.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Along the track road, sir.”

  “The track road! What’s that?”

  The footman led the way out to the porch. The moon was now clear of the trees and in the clear, frosty night a ribbon of pale road could be seen merging into the black of the far plantations. That was the track road, a private drive leading to the stretches of levels on the open park where Claire opened out his racing cars. From it a path led to the main road, on the London side, just short of where the Marfleet road branched from the main turnpike.

  Potter couldn’t make much of it. His first thought had naturally been that Hayles had put the cyanide crystals into the small bottle and had then filled it with hot water; the intent being to commit suicide away from the house, though why a man should come all that way to do himself in, Potter couldn’t fathom. But that note with the secret terms of delivery, the lugubrious farewell of the footman, and the unstrung condition of Hayles generally, all pointed in that direction. But why had he gone off down that track road unless he wanted a short cut to the turnpike; in other words, to get back to London as soon as possible? And if so, he wanted the poison for purposes of murder, not suicide! Then another thought. Was Hayles going off to commit suicide—crawling away like a sick animal—to die in a corner? Or was the whole thing the result of a nervous breakdown? Was Hayles performing a series of strange actions, not knowing himself what they signified? In that case the note to Mrs. Claire would be the deciding thing—whether, for instance, it were coherent or gibberish.

  “Look here!” said Potter, making up his mind. “As I told you, I was sent down here on behalf of Mrs. Hayles by Mr. Franklin, who’s a personal friend of Mr. Claire. I’d better let him know wh
at’s happened straight away. Where’s your ’phone?”

  He tried unsuccessfully to get Franklin at his flat; then told house exchange to take a message for the hall porter. As a further precaution he got through to Durango House and left instructions there. By that time it was eight o’clock.

  “I shall have to stop here till somebody turns up,” he told the footman. “I think I’ll have a walk down that road in case he’s still wandering about—lost his memory or something.”

  The long, cross tracks, when he got to them, were as interesting as railway lines, and about as informative, and having gone half a mile along one and back on another, he had seen all he wanted. Another track, a rougher, unmetalled one, looked more inviting as it led away between the woods through a private gate. A few yards of straight track, a downward turn and he was on the edge of a great pool of water, acres and acres by the look of it, tree-fringed and gloomy at the banks, but out beyond the shadows silvery gray with the reflections of the moon. As the frosty air met him, he shuddered. A hell of a night that, to commit suicide by drowning! Then when he came to wonder why that thought had come to him, he didn’t know. In the case of Hayles, with that small bottle of poison in his possession, the thought was utterly preposterous.

  Then along the path that skirted the lake, he saw with the moonlight full on it, what was evidently a boathouse. He hunched his shoulders and trudged on. A mere trickle of a stream to jump over and he was on a raised platform that led to the boathouse side where wooden steps went down to the water. On that platform, by the steps, lay a newspaper, folded once, and on it a bowler hat! He picked it up carefully and flashed his torch. The hat showed no name or the shop that had sold it. But the paper, spread out as if to make a dry place for the hat, was a London Evening Record, 6.30 edition of that day’s date and therefore purchased by Hayles on his way down, and after 3.30. Then he tried the hat on his own head; very small—probably a seven or less, and quite likely to be owned by a man of the physique the guv’nor had indicated to him.

  He looked away to the indeterminate distance of the far shore, then back at the boathouse. Then an idea! At the bottom of the steps by the low, gable roof a flash of the torch showed two boats moving gently in the water; but the third, the one that ought to have been occupying the vacant space nearest the steps had gone, and on the mooring ring its rope was still hanging!

  He flashed the torch round again and this time found a boathook in its slot under the eaves—the very thing for testing the depth of the water. But when he thrust it down all round the boathouse, the depth was nowhere more than three foot, and that slanting! Then if Hayles had drowned himself, it had been out in the lake, from the missing boat; and if so the boat would by then have come ashore. Where was the wind? Due north, behind the boathouse.

  Five minutes later, he found what he was looking for—the boat sideways to a shelving bank of gravel under a thicket of young willows. It looked immovable and good for the night, and in any case Potter knew better than to run the risk of undue interference. There’d be the risk, of course, of the wind’s freshening and shifting, but he chanced that and left it there, oarless and empty as far as he could see.

  Back at the Hall, the footman had a message from Mrs. Claire which made things more difficult. She would not be returning that night. And that was the seventeenth hole of Potter’s perfect round. In the smoking-room with a whisky and soda and a plate of cold beef, he began his wait for the men higher up—a wait that was to be well over two hours.

  CHAPTER XIX

  AND STILL MORE LADIES

  It was eight o clock the following morning when Wharton and Franklin returned to Marfleet Hall, to see by daylight what Potter had made out in the less revealing moonlight. Potter had spent the night with them at Reading, and even after a night’s sleep on his story, Wharton refused to commit himself to a definite statement of opinion. Hayles might have panicked himself into suicide—and then again he might not.

  The ground was hard with frost till they reached the cutting between the woods. From there to the boathouse, the trees had kept off most of the wind and that was distinctly unfortunate as far as the boathouse platform was concerned. No sign of a footprint, even Potter’s, was visible in the hoarfrost which didn’t exist. However, Wharton had a good look round, noted the position occupied by the folded newspaper, then turned his back on the boathouse.

  “Show us where the boat is, Potter, please.”

  The three of them moved with care down the gravelly bank. A few feet away, Wharton went on alone to examine the ground. Then he shook his head and motioned them forward.

  “There aren’t any footprints—and there ought to be!”

  “Potter’s?”

  Wharton shook his head again. “You didn’t come so far, did you, Potter?… I thought not. What we ought to see are Hayles’s footmarks—as we should have done if it hadn’t been for this shingly gravel.”

  Franklin looked surprised.

  “You see those patent rowlocks? Whoever took the boat out must have had the oars in them or he’d have had no fulcrum for leverage. Only, once the oars were in, they couldn’t slip out. And if they didn’t slip out, then the boat couldn’t have drifted dead straight with the wind. Look at that long stretch of weeds between here and the boathouse—regular semicircle of ’em, all round the middle. Now you see the point. If the oars didn’t slip out, they were lifted out; probably just before the boat came ashore. Where are they, Potter? Pretty close?”

  “I didn’t see ’em, sir. It was too dark for that.”

  “Never mind! You go that way, and you try that, John. Look well under the bushes.”

  In five minutes both were found, one on each side of the boat; Potter’s six foot beyond the bank and Franklin’s rather more—but with a damning piece of evidence. The blade of the oar rested clear of the water on the stout twig of a submerged branch!

  “There you are!” said Wharton triumphantly. “They were taken out after the boat had grounded. He slewed her round and threw back the oars at convenient places. Both blades outwards?… I thought so! That’s the natural way to throw an oar—by the shaft, if that’s what they call it. Only, unfortunately for him, one rested on that branch; the water couldn’t have lapped it there.”

  He gave a quick look round. “Mind you, I don’t see the point of going over all this for footprints. We don’t know the exact boots he was wearing—and they wouldn’t add to the story if we did. We’ll haul the boat up the bank and when we get back, find out if it was really fastened in that boathouse yesterday afternoon.”

  He set off again for the road as if the whole episode had been forgotten. “Funny, leaving that hat!” he said. “And all nicely on the paper! Still, we’re told to expect eccentricities from suicides. Wonder if it was his hat. And will his mother know?”

  “When are they ’phoning you up?”

  “I told them, at once. And not to scare his mother—poor old soul!” He stopped short in his tracks. “Curious sort of idea I had running through my head after breakfast this morning. Jacob and Joseph, wasn’t it? ‘Tell me whether this be thy son’s coat or no.’” He tossed his head and moved on again. “Still, hats are different.”

  “What on earth was he doing with that poison?” asked Franklin. “Trying to obscure the trail?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Wharton. “So have you, probably; but whether it’s worth anything is quite a different matter. I should say he panicked badly as soon as he heard your voice in the flat. He’d worked himself up to such a pitch that he imagined we were on his heels, so he got the poison because it’s a sure thing. One gulp and you’re holding a harp. But he wanted to see Mrs. Claire first, and get the last ounce of the pathetic out of it. He was disappointed when he found she wasn’t in, so he wrote the note instead. When he got away from the house—looking for a place to die in—he felt somehow he wasn’t getting a square deal. Dying was a bad business—especially alone! And he was going to miss a good deal—the comfort, for instance,
he’d just seen in the Hall. And he began to feel most damnably cold. All the same, he wandered on, putting it off till he got to the boathouse—the scene, I should imagine, of some pleasant doings in the past. There he funked it altogether and decided to fake a suicide instead. When we see that letter he left for Mrs. Claire, we ought to be able to fit in the pieces.”

  “You don’t think he was really unstrung, as the footman told Potter?”

  Wharton gave a snort of derision. “He was playacting—or my name’s Walker. I believe he was scared the first time I clapped my eyes on him at Regent View, and that’s why I tried him out with that… that ambiguous accusation you were so indignant about.” He cut short Franklin’s protestation. “He’s always been sheltered—sort of mother’s white-headed boy. France and Claire kept him as a kind of odd man, because they’d always been together. I dare say he was useful and had a certain amount of brains, but they didn’t take him any too seriously. This time, I think he took himself too seriously by biting off a man’s ration which he couldn’t chew. You couldn’t call him a murderer. Doping that whisky wasn’t real murder. It was a kind of sneak-thief murder. He stuck the poison in, then sneaked off. If the whisky hadn’t been touched, he’d have poured it away as soon as he got back, and thanked God for a lucky escape. As it was, he lost his nerve on the Sunday night and behaved like a child. A man would have faced what we had to tell him, without all that swooning business. And I believe he’s been building on that swoon ever since. He’s frightened to death and he’s remarkably sorry for himself—and he didn’t want to die in a corner. He wanted the footlights and the orchestra.” The General shrugged his shoulders. “I may be wrong, but that’s how I sum up Kenneth Hayles.”

  Franklin agreed. “I think you’re right… but I’d rather like an opinion from somebody else—and that’s Travers. He’s been making quite a study of Hayles.”

  Wharton shot his head round. “What’s he know about it?”

  Franklin smiled. “Now, George, don’t keep up that pretence! You know as well as I do—and you’ve said so—that Travers is a long way short of a fool. To-day for instance, he’s gone with Claire to the funeral. I’ll bet you he finds out something that you and I have missed.”